The anonymous woman who accused Jay-Z and Sean Combs of raping her when she was 13 years old dropped her lawsuit on Friday against the hip-hop moguls.
Jay-Z’s lawyers had pointed to what they described as “glaring inconsistencies” in the woman’s account, citing information that came to light in an NBC report that called details from her account into question.
Jay-Z’s lawyers had asked a judge to dismiss the complaint, but the plaintiff’s lawyer, Tony Buzbee, at that time stood by the accuser in court papers, writing that being a victim of sexual abuse can cause memory lapses. But court papers submitted by the plaintiff on Friday said the suit had been “voluntarily dismissed with prejudice,” meaning that it cannot be refiled.
In a statement, Jay-Z, who vehemently denied the claims from the outset, celebrated the decision, writing that the suit was “never going anywhere.”
“The fictional tale they created was laughable, if not for the seriousness of the claims,” he said. “I would not wish this experience on anyone. The trauma that my wife, my children, my loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed.”
Mr. Buzbee declined to comment.
The lawsuit, first filed in October, added Jay-Z as a defendant in December, and in the court papers the unnamed accuser said that she had been raped by Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) and Sean Combs at a party at a private residence after the MTV Video Music Awards in Manhattan in 2000.
Mr. Combs, who is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting a trial on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, has vehemently denied sexually assaulting anyone.
The woman’s lawsuit claimed that after the encounter she was picked up by her father, whom she called from a gas station. But NBC reported that her father, who would have had to have driven hours from his home in upstate New York to pick her up, did not recall having done so.
The plaintiff also told NBC in an interview that she had spoken to the musician Benji Madden, a member of the band Good Charlotte, at the party after the awards that night. But Mr. Madden, who was not accused of any wrongdoing in the suit, was on tour in the Midwest at the time.
The claim spurred a bitter legal dispute between Mr. Carter’s lawyers and Mr. Buzbee, a high-profile Houston attorney who has separately filed more than 20 lawsuits against Mr. Combs on behalf of clients who said they have been sexually abused.
The post Jay-Z Accuser Drops Rape Lawsuit Against Him and Sean Combs appeared first on New York Times.